A Kiss in Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

Travis finishes the last bite.
     Okay. Now, what do you hear? Travis listens real carefully. I dont hear anything. Exactly.
     Which means there must be nothing on the other side of that hedgeno city, no cars, just nothing. The beach.
    So youre saying you want to go through the hedge? What have we got to lose? How about
     blood? Those bushes look prickly. Its true. But I say, Dont be a wuss.
    Can I have another sandwich at least? I grab the bag from him. After the hedge.
    Fifteen minutes later, theres nothing on any side of us except brambles.
    I bet I look like the victim in a slasher movie, Travis says. Whats the French word for
     chain saw?
    Its not that bad. The flowers sort of smell nice. I inhale. Right. You stay and smell the flowers. Im going back.
    I grab his wrist. Please, Trav. I want to go to the beach. I cant handle another day of
     the tour.
    He pulls away. Whats the big deal? My parents are going to ask me what I did today.
    Thats the thing. My parents wont. They wont ask me what I did the past week. They dont
     care what Im doing. And I hate going to all those stupid museums. Looking at all that
     boring art makes my mind wander, and when my mind wanders, all I can think of is Amber
     kissing that frat boy.
    Travis stops pulling. Wow. That really hit you hard, huh?
    Yeah. I thought I was just making stuff up to get Trav to do what I want, but I have this
     sort of sick feeling in my stomach. Im telling the truth. My parents havent called in two
     weeks, except once to ask me if I signed up for AP Government next year for school, and
     this trip is doing nothing to make me forget about Amber. I see her face in every painting
     in every museumespecially that Degas guy, who painted girls with no faces at all. I cant
     get away from her. Yeah. I just want to go to the beach for one day. I need to be outside.
    Okay, buddy. Only you go in front.
    So I go up front, taking the full scratchy brunt of the brambles for another twenty
     minutestwenty minutes during which I dont think about my parents or Amber but only about the fact that if I lose too much blood, therell be no one here to help. When we
     finally reach the other side, I stop.
    Wow, I say. What is it? Travis is still behind me. Definitely not the beach.

A Kiss in Time

Chapter 3
    W
    
    
     hen I was a kid, back when my family was still pre- tending to like one another, we took a
     trip to Colonial Williamsburg. Its this place where everythings like Colo- nial
     timeshorses and buggies on unpaved streets. Theres stuff like blacksmith shops, too. My
     sister, Meryl, and I had fun with the employees because if you ask them stuff like which
     way to Starbucks, they act like they dont know what youre talking about. But it got weird
     after a while. You wondered if they seriously didnt know it was the twenty- first century.
     I was ready to go home at the end of the day.
    The place on the other side of the hedge is sort of like that. I mean, not just old.
     Pretty much everything in Europe is old and falling apart and important, but this place
     takes historic preservation to a whole new level.
    Do you think its, like, a theme park? I say to Travis. No one here.
    Maybe its just not open yet. Or closed. Is today Sunday?
    The streets are unpaved, and even if they were, theyre barely wide enough to get one of
     those little European cars down. But the transportation here is horses, judg- ing from how
     many are tied to hitching posts, sleeping. Theres not a McDonalds or a Gap anywhere, only
     one building with
    
    
     ALEHOUSE
    
    
     painted on it in peeling, old- fashioned lettering. And the plants look bad. Some are
     overgrown, but a lot of stuff is bare, like the grass died years ago.
    Definitely not the beach. Travis starts pushing through the brambles.
    The brambles have settled into the same shape they were before we went through them. I do
     not want to go through those bushes again.
    Travis must think the same thing because he